EDITORIAL: Can football be fixed?

Sunday, February 3, 2013

The big game to be played today has assumed the attributes of a national holiday. But on this Super Sunday, the attending celebration should be muted amid growing questions about the game of football itself.

How serious are those questions?

Serious enough that there are more than 100 lawsuits against the National Football League by former players contending permanent damage from concussions.

Serious enough that columnist George Will has openly questioned whether football can survive. It is a sport, Will wrote, whose audience is increasingly aware "may cause the players degenerative brain disease."

Serious enough that the NFL Players Association negotiated to have $100 million of NFL profits fund a 10-year Harvard University study of the health dangers posed to its members.

Indeed, more research is needed. But there is no denying the growing medical evidence that blows to the head can cause chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the symptoms of which are similar to Alzheimer's disease, including depression and erratic behavior.

Former NFL players Ray Easterling and Dave Duerson committed suicide and were found to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Junior Seau, who played the pro game for 20 years, committed suicide in May at the age of 43 and his brain tissue is now being studied.

President Barack Obama said this: "I'm a big football fan, but I have to tell you if I had a son, I'd have to think long and hard before I let him play football. And I think those of us who love the sport are going to have to wrestle with the fact that it will probably change gradually to try to reduce some of the violence. In some cases, that may make it a little less exciting, but it will be a whole lot better for the players, and those of us who are fans maybe won't have to examine our consciences quite as much."

It was a politic answer, at best. The real question is whether the game can be fixed or medically managed at all.

As Will put it, "accumulating evidence about new understandings of the human body ... compel the conclusion that football is a mistake because the body is not built to absorb, and cannot be adequately modified by training or protected by equipment to absorb, the game's kinetic energies."

Never mind whether the sport should be played by consenting, full-grown men knowing what we know about concussions.

Can we continue, in good conscience, to allow it to be played by youngsters knowing what we don't know?

We know concussions are harmful, but we know precious little about the cumulative, long-term effect of repeated blows to the head, know even less about the effect of those blows on developing brains, and know hardly anything at all about how to medically manage a gridiron with 22 heads at risk of bumping together on any given play.

Most ominously when it comes to teenagers, this includes blows to the head that are either non-symptomatic or only detected by the player.

Anyone who has ever been, or lived with, or loved a teenage boy has to know that depending on a high school football player to report that another boy has gotten the best of him in a physical contest or to report a friend to an adult is a hopeless optimist.

It is, therefore, hard to understand how high schools can continue to sponsor what effectively is an attractive nuisance that runs the risk of causing long-term harm to the young people in their care.

It's time to think long and hard about this ... not just in the NFL, but here at home, where our young men are at risk.